EasySocial 2.0 Stable Release

Sylvie Tuesday, 01 November 2016 EasySocial

It is here! The team and I are proud to announce one of the biggest ever release for EasySocial. Approximately 2 weeks since the release of RC1, our team has successfully built the best ever social network tool for Joomla!

Our designers did an amazing job in EasySocial 2.0 as there has been tremendous work done on the entire design and user experience.

To those who weren't following our previous blog posts, here are some of the key highlights of EasySocial 2.0 that you should look out for:

Pages Pro

Pages are somewhat like professional, business directories or some would even use it to the extend of a fan club. Pages is a 'must-have' for any entrepreneurs or public figures as it serve as an avenue to communicate with the fans, clients or even potential leads out there with the similar social interest.

EasySocial 2.0 pages will serve its purpose to fulfill that with a personal touch added to it. You can now get more businesses or attract site owners to board your site which allows an increase in your user-base.

Conversations 2.0

The entire conversations in EasySocial 2.0 has been redesigned ground up and rather than it being treated as a "mailbox", it is now looking more elegant than ever. The entire user experience on mobile devices have also been tweaked heavily so that your users would love the new interface be it on a desktop, tablet or more commonly used mobile devices.

Better Administration Tools

Throughout the life cycle of EasySocial, we realize that we paid the least attention to the back-end but that is where most of you would spend time on. With EasySocial 2.0, the user experience at the administration area has been improvised tremendously. In fact, we have also added an info-graphics tool on your Joomla dashboard to allow you to get a bird's-eye view of your site status.

Twitter Sign-on and Auto-posting

EasySocial already has a built-in integration with Facebook Single Sign on and it has proven an increase of sign-ups on sites in comparison with normal sites with standard registrations. With EasySocial 2.0, you now have the option to integrate with Twitter as well.

This integration would further increase conversion rates for sign-ups on your social site. A recent study shows that Twitter is used by approximately 5% of the internet while Facebook on the other hand has 45% market share. You would now have 50% of internet users gaining easy access to your site just by a click of a button!

Apart from the single sign-on for Twitter, EasySocial 2.0 has an external app that makes use of the single sign on for Twitter to automagically push your status updates to your Twitter account, nifty eh? ;)

New and Improvised Application Store

With EasySocial 2.0 built-in Application Store, download or installing EasySocial apps would be a breeze. Be it paid or free, as long as the app is supported you can install it directly from EasySocial back-end. This addition would simplify your tasks of updating your apps as now it also allows you to update your apps just a click of a button.

Photo Improvements

To our surprise, this this feature was frequently request by our users therefore we thought of implementing some photo improvements to EasySocial 2.0 release. With the photo improvement added in, users are able to upload some of the most trendious GIF files, take Pen Pineapple Apple Pen for instance ;) all over the activity streams without needing to upload a short video clip to compensate it.

On top on that, navigating through multiple photos are made a whole lot easier with the newly added arrow keys. Besides that, EasySocial 2.0 photo tagging layout and album layout were improved significantly as well. :)

35 Redesigned modules

As Mark has shared about modules previously, till this date we have a total of 30 modules and our team has added additional 5 new modules in EasySocial 2. All of these 35 modules have been redesigned, refactored and it looks simply amazing with the new UI.

User Experience

Since the release of EasySocial 1.4x version, we already have plans to consolidate all our toolbars to be uniform across all extensions. This will give users the experience that they are not browsing a different site altogether when there's proper standardization.

Performance Enhancements

Save the best for the last they say! Yes, I am saving this for the last as this is one of the key areas which the team has improvised on EasySocial 2.0. We are seeing at least 35% speed improvements in comparison to prior versions. While adding a ton of features, the team managed to reduce the footprint of our javascript files by almost 400kb and reduced the concurrent http requests to just a single request on most frequently used pages. Your web host will definitely love this new improvement!

Thank you to your lending hand and continuous support !

For those who has been with us since the launch of EasySocial back in the day, we are so grateful for your continuous support till this day; let's not forget our awesome bug squad who has contributed into this project in one way or another. Without you, EasySocial might not have 'evolved' to this very version. :)

We sincerely hope you guys will love EasySocial 2.0, and for the benefit of those who did not managed to follow through our blog posts about the progression of EasySocial 2.0, you may click on the links below and access the downloads on your dashboard as well :)

Nice features! I have a few questions regarding Pages Pro.
1) Can we restrict who can add pages? For example, limit to specific profiles or user groups?
2) Is it possible to search the timetable. For example, find who is open at 4pm on a Tuesday.

I decided best bet was to go with good old Protostar...just like ES2 test site. 3rd Party templates are going to take a while to catch up with ES2 awesomeness. That or no doubt the awesome SI team have their own templates soon to be updated.

CONGRATULATIONS: With the stable release of EasySocial 2 the StackIdeas Team has made available, the most amazing conversations and social platform that connects people to relevant conversations and information. People can connect and work collaboratively and accomplish more together, and this version pushes the boundaries. AWESOME!

It´s not true that the pricing is not going up. The pricing is what we call "hidden raised". The most obvious part is the registration requester: It is just one simple feature, it was free and now it is raised to 15$. I don´t see any connection to the effort or maintenance, this little feature is kept very easy and has very limited settings, compared with other popup-extensions.

Then let´s have a look on the "docker". This is definitely a main feature, it´s a first step after years of suffering from all users NOT using the default-templates. This is one of the few (!) navigation-options of easysocial. For my opinion, this is a basics-plugin that should be part of the main-code, and not a plugin that must be paid extra with 45$.

It´s true that the price of the main component is kept the same. But the main component is getting "lighter" in the same moment. I would definitely prefer to have the main price raised and not this "hidden price-raisings". Even a bundle with "all Extensions" needs to pay another 15 Dollars extra for a registration-requester. This is just frustrating.

Can´t you just raise the price for the Pro-Bundle a little and put all other stuff inside?
It´s really not about 100 Dollars more or less. I would really prefer to pay 100 Dollars more for the bundle instead of paying15 Dollars for small features that should be includet. Isn´t it freaky when a plugin like "Docker" is not automatically included in your biggest Bundle-Offers?

All the best, Julian!

PS: Sorry for not being exited because of ES 2.0. It´s really just the kind of pricing, that really frustrates me. I would also prefer to be happy about the new release instead of being frustrated about the pricing.

Thank you for your feedback and I sincerely appreciate this. I am afraid some of your points which you brought up isn't entirely accurate. Why?

1. Increasing the price of the product is not the way to go. Not everyone needs these functionality and not everybody will use it. This is why we separated the cost so that people who really need these new additions could purchase them separately.

2. Increasing the price is more expensive in a long run because your renewals will also incur these price increases. Apps purchased from the App Store are 1 time only payment. You do not need to renew it and it is our role to ensure it is up to date as well updating it.

3. Registration requester as you mentioned is not a big thing for you but it requires costs for us to maintain and update it but probably only a fraction of site owners uses it. Including it in the core will increase the size of the component even if you don't intend to use it.

4. Docker plugin should never be a core and it is something new which we spent over 3 months experimenting and playing with it. We cannot be jacking up the price of the extension because we decide to add docker into the core. Not everyone wants it and not everyone is going to use it. Hence, the need of releasing it separately.

To be honest with you, I share the same view as you do but probably back in the days where things are less complicated. It makes perfect sense to just throw everything into the extension. Having said that, software do evolve and more software companies are now keeping their core as lean as possible.

Some examples that you could see is Joomla, Apple, Google and Microsoft where they are uncoupling most of their core functionality and allow their users to cherry pick the apps that they want. As a matter of fact, Joomla is one of the best example where they are starting to remove some of the core extensions and making them as separate install-able extension.

1. Increasing the price of the product is not the way to go. Not everyone needs these functionality and not everybody will use it. This is why we separated the cost so that people who really need these new additions could purchase them separately.

Following this argument you could switch every plugin to be charged extra.
There is a lot of features I don´t use. I don´t use the navbar itself, I don´t use the FB-Login (because I have JFB-Connect), I don´t use Discussions in Groups and much more. But ... I pay for it. And this is good!
I pay for a complete software, and not for "parts of it".

2. Increasing the price is more expensive in a long run because your renewals will also incur these price increases. Apps purchased from the App Store are 1 time only payment. You do not need to renew it and it is our role to ensure it is up to date as well updating it.

This is a realyl bad descicion in terms of marketing.
This way, ES seems cheaper at the first view, but more expensive once somebody wants to buy it.
The pricing is getting more and more difficult. Once you had a bundle which contained extensions with different subscription-times. Now you have "Pro-Bundles" without those little plugins. And you need to explain that they must not be renewed. Very complicated pricing!

3. Registration requester as you mentioned is not a big thing for you but it requires costs for us to maintain and update it but probably only a fraction of site owners uses it. Including it in the core will increase the size of the component even if you don't intend to use it.

I am sure the FB-Connection requires much more costs for maintaining and updating.
And again: I pay it, even if I don´t need it!

4. Docker plugin should never be a core and it is something new which we spent over 3 months experimenting and playing with it. We cannot be jacking up the price of the extension because we decide to add docker into the core. Not everyone wants it and not everyone is going to use it. Hence, the need of releasing it separately.

It´s the same as with all other extensions. The question is: Where to draw the line?
The navigation and the templating are the weakest points of Easysocial. We had this discussion in other articles already. The Docker is a first step, not really a solution. By making the docker an external (paid) extension, you really set the value of ES down. For my opinion: Navigation is a core functionality! And as long as the navation is not a super-hyper-mega-extension, it should not get charged extra.

Spending 3 months into the developement of a good navigation should be a core-developement. If the pricing of ES is to low to keep this inside, you should raise the price. Imagine BMW would sell theire cars without wheels, just to keep the pricing down.

Some examples that you could see is Joomla, Apple, Google and Microsoft where they are uncoupling most of their core functionality and allow their users to cherry pick the apps that they want. As a matter of fact, Joomla is one of the best example where they are starting to remove some of the core extensions and making them as separate install-able extension.

Now you mix two things: Pricing and core.
I agree that features should be "un-installable" to keep the code clean and light.
But not every little feature should be paid extra.

To be honest with you, I share the same view as you do but probably back in the days where things are less complicated. It makes perfect sense to just throw everything into the extension. Having said that, software do evolve and more software companies are now keeping their core as lean as possible.

Just add a new subscription:
The Stackideas-Suite!
Put EVERYTHING inside.
Find a fair price.
And then watch, what users will buy.

That last paragraph sounds like an ideal solution for people who are willing to pay more for a package that includes everything that we release in the arm of StackIdeas.

Here my suggestion:
490 US$ for EVERYTHING
(including smatphone-app and other new releases)
One year subscription
Renewal only 290 US$

For a PRO version, not a Developers-Version.

This, for my opinion, would be an ideal pricing.
It would stop the problem of having multiple subscriptions that expire on different dates.
And the massive discount on renewals would be a good motivation to keep the subscription always active.

I agree with you that the speed is very important. Unfortunately, the user address is not so easy to remember. I had in the future before commercial products for certain users to create and then does not make it so beautiful. E.g. Domain.xyz/0815-User vs. Domain.xyz/User

Sorry for my bad English, I hope you understand what Google Translated.

Is this because of current Joomla routing? If the performance difference is hardly noticeable I personally would go without an id. Joomla 3.7 is planning on having id-less URLs as an option for the new router. Perhaps in that scenario they could be removed, hence removing the need for extra requests.

Yep, as a matter of fact, it needs to run at least a minimum of 2 additional sql queries to get the id of the user with a given permalink.

Why?

1. Assuming that your username, permalink contains a space, the result would be your-username .
2. Because of that space, Joomla will automagically convert the first - with :
3. Now, there is a discrepancy, what if the user's username / permalink would really contain a - rather than a space.
4. We end up firing 2 more additional queries to test these differences.
5. The more spaces, or the more dashes used in your permalink, would end up firing more queries.

Same price but less and less... A standard option turned into a default option and then into a paid app in only a few weeks:
URL Shortener (v2.0.1) 15$

I agree with @Julian you price did go up in an hidden way that is not fair at all when not mentioning the standard options that are now paid apps !

Josh Lewis about 1 month ago
What happened to the simple url option that enabled us to have site/username? It was such a cool feature in ES 1.4! I'm hoping that it was not deprecated, it really gave a personalized touch to profiles.

Comment last edited on about 1 month ago by Mark
Reply Permalink

Mark about 1 month ago
It is activated by default now since most people are using it and you cannot turn it off

Reply Permalink

A standard option turned into a default option and then into a paid app in only a few weeks:
URL Shortener (v2.0.1) 15$

Reasoning is pretty simple, in 1.4 we added an expensive feature which resulted into hundreds, if not thousands of support tickets being generated because there are a million different web server configurations.

In order to continue maintaining this feature, our support team had to spend time troubleshooting sites only to find conflicts which are caused by other plugins, incorrect mod_rewrite setup, conflicting menu aliases and a whole load more of other conflicting possibilities

We extracted this out as a plugin and charge a small amount of fee because not everyone uses this and for those who really needs it, would only need to pay a fraction of their daily spending which is $15

As someone who doesn't have a lot of cash I was fine with URL shortener being a paid plugin at a reasonable price. Paying for what you want actually makes a lot of sense. I just hope ids are eventually removed in J 3.7.

I didn´t have the URL-Shortener in mind, but it seems like a quick look makes sense.
A few postings above you say ...

1. Increasing the price of the product is not the way to go. Not everyone needs these functionality and not everybody will use it. This is why we separated the cost so that people who really need these new additions could purchase them separately.

Ok, if this is your strategy, why did you turn the URL-Shortener into a paid feature?
About the URL-Shortener you wrote:

It is activated by default now since most people are using it and you cannot turn it off

In that case you turned a feature which is used by the most of your customers into a paid feature.
This does not align with your comment above, when you say, you make some features optional BECAUSE not all users need it.

It is time to stop those little price-cosmetics. They feel bad and are not usefull.
Rise the price or leave it low, but don´t destroy all pricing-policy with such weired stuff.

Why should everybody pay for a higher price just because you have to? I think the way of having several addons to select from is way better. Because you can make a bundle by yourself and decide what to pick.

It is activated by default now since most people are using it and you cannot turn it off

However, following your thoughts please tell me how much ES will cost me without the Facebook-Connection, without the new Twitter-Connection and without the navbar. I don´t use all of them.

I am sure that I am paying lots and lots of features that I don´t use. And this is good!
EasySocial is ONE piece of software, not a big number of little scripts. I can buy it ... or leave it. When I buy it, I buy all featuers.

Starting to split it up will lead into a mess. And I really don´t understand the kind of pricing behind this.
You set the docker to 45 Dollars, the URL-Shortener and the Registration-Requester to 15$. The whole Facebook-Connection is free.

Does that mean: The docker took the most developement and maintenance and is used by the fewest amount of users? And does this mean the Registration-Requester is more expensive to maintain then the groups-feature, which are free?

I already stated that ES is a great, gereat software, but the pricing is getting worse each year. Please don´t try to fool me with incorrect argumenattions. Your own statement to the URL-Shortener is exactly the opposide to what you said about which features you will charge extra.

There is just one clear point, that seems to be stable:
You want more money.

And the answer is simple:Then raise the price!
(In a fair and transparent way)

With all due respect, I think you are taking things way out of context here.

The statement about the URL shortener was my bad and I have to admit, my response was incorrect as it was never included in EasySocial 2 as we have removed the feature altogether due to performance and maintenance issues. I should have checked this with the team before responding.

If all we want is more money, we should follow your suggestion to increase price for everyone, regardless if they use those features or not, they still need to pay more and this way we make more money wouldn't it?

If we decouple the apps from the core, people who needs it would then purchase it which causes us to make less money? So your statement that says we want more money is not true.

Our stance in decoupling the apps is because we only need to charge a small premium for people who needs to implement this for their site or their customers site. To be honest, I don't see anything wrong with this considering that our support team needs to be readily available all the time and they are salaried employees, not volunteers.

With all due respect, I think you are taking things way out of context here.

Hi Mark,

thanks for your reaction. I think, it´s not "out of context".
It´s exactly the main point, that I am trying to hit.

So your statement that says we want more money is not true.

You should (!) want more money! This must be the instinct of every company to survive!
So if you don´t "want more money", maybe it would be usefull for you to rethink your believes about getting a fair price for a good product.ES is worth more money! But trying to split it to make it fair for anybody will lead into a desaster. Simply the maintaining of all single purchases is some effort, that could be much more usefull in the main developement.

It´s a natural fact of EVERY product, that it has features not needet for all customers. I have a microwave with programs that I NEVER user. I have a television with a CI-Interface that I don´t use. And my windows-installation has millions of features that I simply don´t care about.

Packing all those tiny things togher in the complete price makes it easy. Starting to split up simple things (URL Shortener, Reg-Requester, Docker,...) starts a process of everybody rethinking what he needs and thinking about how to save money by not using anything. In a long-term-thought buying ES will be very complicated, because a potential new customer has to decide about tons of featuers that he doesn´t know yet.

If all we want is more money, we should follow your suggestion to increase price for everyone, regardless if they use those features or not, they still need to pay more and this way we make more money wouldn't it?

Definitely, and this would be a good choice!
I don´t care about paying for FB-Connection and other stuff that I don´t use. I pay for it, because I pay for a complete product! By paying you I also make sure that you have enough ressources to continue in developement.

Our stance in decoupling the apps is because we only need to charge a small premium for people who needs to implement this for their site or their customers site. To be honest, I don't see anything wrong with this considering that our support team needs to be readily available all the time and they are salaried employees, not volunteers.

Raising the price of the compoment itself gives much more freedom. Earning more money will give you the opportunity to increase the developement and the quality of support. And by not splitting up everything, the price-increase will be much smaller then for external and single-paid extensions.

We all profit from a complete product. And we all profit from you making more money.
By giving most users the opportunity to simply "vote-out" from extensions and save money, you will cut your ressources for developement.
And on the top of that cake, some users will simply not even test a component because they don´t want to spent extra-money.

Please be aware:
I don´t criticize the price itself. For my opinion, you easily can raise the price!
What I criticize is the pricing-structure itself.

I want to pay for Stackideas like once a year and that´s it. I don´d care about if it´s 100 Dollars more or less.
In the moment I have three or four subscriptions that expire at different dates, now there are three apps on top, that will be charged extra. This is just stressing and not relaxed!

And, once again, at least adding an option to "buy all complete" would make the whole thing much more relaxed!
And I wo uld be very, very happy if you could add this option before my recent subscription expires.

That's a good idea but not on the modules level but probably on the composer / wysiwyg level. Perhaps it would also be ideal if there is a bundle that doesn't include a year length support for people who don't need it

Access to Updates but no support (unless paid support membership), is that what you meant? ...Why not??

It also would pitch usergroups against each other.
And there would be an endless amount of discussions about "Bug or Support". All non-support-paying users would try to say "It´s a bug, so you have to help me, because I paid the software."

I definitely vote against making the price smaller and smaller. The support is not only support. By all the support-requests, the developer get lots of information about the needs in the community and stuff like that. Even if I don´t need support ... I want to pay for it!

As long as all users pay "the complete product" we can make most out of the product. This will support the product most and in the same moment keep the ratio between pricing and featuers the beste. Only in this concept you will have the maximum features for the lowest price, while Stackideas will also get well paid!

I reject all arguments like these, everywhere on the web and here are already different subscription levels since years. YOU decided to opt for ONE subscription and NOT the other...YOU (subscribers in general) decided to PAY for what you believe is correct amount for the service/support needed or in other words value for money.

And there would be an endless amount of discussions about "Bug or Support". All non-support-paying users would try to say "It´s a bug, so you have to help me, because I paid the software."

I totally agree.

Even if I don´t need support ... I want to pay for it!

Seriously Wanting/willing to pay more for ANYthing is an absolute nonsense ! Why do you not pay more taxes to your government even if they do not ask, or maybe you already do it, again seriously you like to pay ??

No decision about new pricing/subscription can be taken in one day...
Why not open a discussion thread in the Billing section of the support forum?
Value for money is the key for all of us...

I agree with Julian - his recent argument should be seriously noted. And the comment above is essentially pitching one set of paid users against another. Compared to him, i'm a novice user. I'm likely to use your products on potentially a maximum of two sites and my tickets will be about relatively simple problems, unlike a developer who may bog your support team down with problems on the potentially scores of sites that they are developing . All your customers should work TOGETHER to support Stackideas to continue to produce feature rich, stable and excellent products. By all means increase the price of the products but continue to make them feature-rich. Will integrating those APPS and adding an extra $50 to each bundle, help?

As posted earlier, I believe it's definitely worth considering adding a new package that includes a premium to people who are willing to pay and would get access to all our extensions, apps, templates.

Can someone please just point me to pricing for ES 2.0 and which features are now at an additional cost (that were available in 1.X ) so I can determine if this upgrade makes sense for us? We do not use any other of your products so we don't need bundle pricing...thank you

There are 2 features that was on EasySocial 1.4.x and they are no longer available in the core by default.

1. Registration requester module (This module displays a popup for non logged in users). We have removed this module in favor of a system plugin which respects your user's session (If they closed it, it will no longer popup again) and it has a brand new design as well.

This feature has been disabled by default on 1.4.x unless you explicitly turn it on.

Don't get confused over simplified url structures versus url shorteners. URL shortener is only applicable to user profiles. In EasySocial 2.x, we have already simplified the URL structure massively and the URL makes more sense compared to 1.4.x

I think the bundle pricing is great... now you can get all major components for one year at a reasonable cost. What I disliked before was that EasySocial was only 6 months support. But with the bundle, all of the components are one year... this is a step in the right direction.

I was going to get rid of EasySocial and EasyBlog, but now I am considering buying the pro bundle.

My only problem is that currently EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss are paid for until summer of 2017, and my Komento support runs out later this month. Also, my EasySocial subscription ran out many months ago.

Is there anything new in ES2 regarding search capabilities within the content uploaded into the stream? This is something i consider not so strong in ES. Or may be i dont know the product so well, yet.

I'm a bit perplexed at some of the comments/concerns towards the new pricing options. I for one feel that a customer should always be in control of how much money they spend, as well as what they spend it on. When I first began associating myself with Stackideas and their products, it was a tough decision for me to try and figure out exactly what I wanted and how I could leverage the extensions for my service. I was building something entirely new for my users and I was building it from a clean slate. Had the option been there to pick and choose what I wanted/needed, I could have saved myself quite a bit of money in the early stages and then added on exactly what it is that I learned that I needed through my user testing. To this day, there are still features that I do not use, and probably will not ever use.

The comments I've read about pitching user groups against one another is absurd. I do not worry myself with what other users are paying/using as they know what they need better than I do. It shouldn't be up to me to assume what a customer needs and I should have the freedom to purchase and use exactly what I need for my own platform.

As for the notion that lowering prices and not charging the highest possible rate for the full library of features will somehow hurt Stackideas and their ability to continue to fund their developments, this really doesn't make sense from a business perspective. The new pricing model will appeal to a new type of client and that will lead to an increase in revenue. There are people out there who will feel more comfortable making smaller purchases for more specific features and this will actually benefit the community as a whole. As a consumer, I enjoy being able to customize any purchase that I make, be it from a cell phone plan, to a personal computer, and even for software extensions. Suggesting that developers should always charge the highest possible amount for every customer is not a sustainable business model as you will quickly alienate an entire group of customers with specific needs and budgets.

As far as support goes, I agree that support is a super critical feature when trying to leverage any third party extension for your platform. Having said that, I have installed many extensions from other developers and have opted out of the support model because I was confident that I would not need it. This flexibility has saved me quite a bit of money which I was then able to use towards other areas of development. The fact that you can always go back and pay for the support service is what gives me the confidence with this type of choice. Having a choice and being in full control of a purchase with a clear definition of what you are paying for is a really important thing for customers; transparency will lead to trust and it may also encourage a customer to continue to support your service.

I am looking forward to the ES2 upgrade on my platform and will evaluate which of the extra features I need to purchase before even considering if the cost is reasonable or not. Stackideas has been one of the best providers I have dealt with and they have always had their community's best interest at heart. As with any big change, there will be an adjustment period, and I am confident that the idea to allow users to customize their purchase for their needs will benefit us all in the long run.

A long post but I agree with you and I believe we are meaning and sharing the same point of view.

What I will never acept is companies turning customers into hostages.
Developpers believing customers now depend on them are wrong!
If I feel I become an hostage I will move to an alternative component, migration tools exist, and design can always be adapted.

I did renew my suscription today but did downgrade from "agency" value to Express.

I am waiting for a clarification on this pricing matter and a reaction from Mark about your post @castrogstar ...

I might be missing something but mobile support seems to have been removed from the launch version of ES 2? Can we get come comment from Devs? Not sure why we would install this without mobile support when v1.4 support mobile. Using on narrow viewports does not work well at present (Elegant, Wireframe)

Using screen resolution checks is no longer ideal because to do that in a component level, a script needs to run indefinitely to check if the browser has been resized and this has some weight on the browser.

Nobody in their right sane mind would resize their desktop browser to a size of a mobile device to browse your site unless they are a developer / webmaster

With EasySocial 2, we have made the entire process much leaner where there are no scripts running continuously to check on your screen resolution. Instead, it will be based on the user's agent information and determine which layout to be shown to the user respectively

My 2 cents with respect to pricing: I have no idea of how typical/untypical I am as a SI user. But I have multiple Stackideas Subscriptions for 5 years + now. Have bought 2 Templates, Meta Man and want to buy the Docker Plugin when I have the cash. Yep I am on a tight budget. Being able to pay in dribs and drabs over longer periods of time has been mission critical for me. Significant price hikes or paying more in one go is likely to be a big challenge for me. Just saying.

Just thought about looking if there is something new about the mobile web app when I saw this post from Paul and I thought I give my 2 cents as well.

For me, having one project at the moment and in planning for a second project time is more important than the price. The faster newest features are there, the more I am willing to invest to be there before my competitors. In case of my project I got far behind my competitor due to the lack of a proper mobile handling of the site. Depending on this fact I would have been motivated to pay more like one year ago than I am now because the potential of my project lowers when I am loosing more and more users each day to my competitor.

Let's have an example for this moment. Due to the fact that it is not possible to have email notifications switched without them being switched on for each user I lost a lot of users. Up2date would be push notifications through the browser. For having this option as an app/plugin or whatever I would easily pay x$. But the moment it gets common that any site got that, the worth lowers due to not having an advantage to the competitors but just get where they are.

Another example were the mobile web app. The moment Appcarvers started with 399 for the easysocial app, I would have easily paid hundreds $ for the mobile web app solution instead of this never finished (cr)app. Now I got so far behind that I will invest though but my budget for that project lowered the more far I got behind..

Of course I know the problem of development and I have no solution for how to be faster and more efficient. I just wanted to give you another point of view about the pricing plans. On the other hand I have to say that I think the 300$ two sites bundle is just a great thing to maintain the current project and start a new one right away.

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